Green Room is one of the tautest, tantalizing and terrifying thrillers to come along in a long time. It’s a horror film that firmly sits in that genre where the monsters in this tale are solely of the human kind.
Anton Yelchin is Pat, a member of a punk rock quartet from Arlington, Virginia who find themselves in the Pacific Northwest on a tour that seems to be heading nowhere fast. When they get a last second gig at a bar in Oregon, they head there with their last bit of gas (some of it siphoned!) for a $350 payday. They know, going in, that this bar is notorious for skinheads and is partial to attracting a bit of a racist crowd. That’s not something unusual for this band, so they head north to play the gig, collect the cash and then have enough money to head back home.
They play their set, the crowd responds as a skinhead crowd would (in the best of ways) and as they are leaving, they witness a murder in the titular locale.
Yeah, that is going to be a problem.
Needless to say when the leader of the white supremacist compound where the club is located — Darcy Banker (Patrick Stewart) — shows up, no one is getting in or out until this situation is contained. Considering Pat has already called 911 on his cell phone about what he has seen, this situation will likely get worse before it gets better for our musician heroes. If it does ever improve…
Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier has delivered something truly disturbing and delightful in the most maniacal of ways. Green Room feels so real it is as if the auteur lived with these people to give his audience the feel of what it is like to live and breathe amongst people who could not be more racist, violent and vigilant about both those tenets of their lives. These four musicians just want to leave and swear they won’t tell a soul about what they have seen. Of course, not one person at the compound believes that and so it becomes crystal clear that our band of misfits is going to have to escape by any means necessary. To quote the title of another movie, yes, there will be blood.
The cast delivers from the smallest role to the four thespians that play the band to Imogen Poots, who stars as Amber, a “regular” at this club who finds herself locked in the Green Room with the band as a witness to the murder. Alia Shawkat plays Sam and the only female member of this band, given their genre of music, has to be pretty tough. And when all hell breaks loose in and around the Green Room, the actress nails the part of a woman pushed to her limits who already knows keenly well how to beat back the boys.
Saulnier first impressed us with 2013’s Blue Ruin and we could not be more thrilled how he took the time to write, direct and cut together Green Room in the time since. This is a film that was painstakingly put together with the most expert of touches on every front. From the music to the production design, to makeup, hair and sound effects (yes, even that comes into play on numerous occasions to heighten the tension) — Green Room is a riveting look at a revolting world that the audience will not only be unable to look away from, but never forget.
Green Room is also insanely efficient. It clocks in at just under 90 minutes and moments are spliced together in an almost colliding fashion. For example, there is a scene where our group is hanging out and someone puts the needle on a record and we only hear the song for about three seconds before Saulnier cuts to another scene. We don’t need to hear the full song. We don’t need to hear erroneous exposition from our cast. The mood was set in those mere moments and now, we can move on to the next shocking discovery.
See, that’s actually a great way to describe Green Room. It is a fantastical shocking discovery.
Grade: A-